


Render Unto Caesar

by ConnivingOphelia



Category: Princess Bride (1987), The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bloodplay, Cutting, Established Relationship, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Jealousy, Knifeplay, M/M, Marking, Oral Sex, Painplay, Past Underage Sex, Rimming, S&M, Scarification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 07:44:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11619090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConnivingOphelia/pseuds/ConnivingOphelia
Summary: When he turned eighteen, Count Rugen left Florin to pursue his architecture degree and apprenticeship. After four long years, he comes home at last - and he's gotten more than just an education. Humperdinck reclaims what's rightfully his.





	Render Unto Caesar

He detected the approaching footsteps long before the squirrel did. At first he held his breath and willed the sound away, but the clumsy tromping only grew louder as it crashed through the undergrowth. The squirrel froze in its foraging, its beady black eyes darting around the surrounding forest. Twigs snapped, dry leaves crunched as they pulverized beneath the advancing feet. The squirrel whirled and shot into the labyrinth of trees.

Humperdinck stood. He stared into the shadows where his prey had disappeared, and he let the swell of rage wash over him. They _knew_ not to disturb him when he was out hunting. He waited, fists clenched, until the footsteps slowed and stopped ten feet from where he stood. He heard the rustle on the grass of a one-kneed genuflection, the polite cough amid labored breath from the long trek. His hand twitched over the hilt of his sword, but he steeled himself against the indulgent impulse. He turned around.

The squire ducked his head just before Humperdinck could meet his eyes. “Your Highness,” he mumbled.

Humperdinck glanced back behind him at the quiet forest, at the swaying boughs that tugged at him with their promise of the hunt: the systematic tracking, pillaging, destroying. He felt almost dizzy from the disorientation of forcing himself out of that world and back into the tedium of his royal obligations; it took a moment to find the right language. “What is it,” he snapped.

The squire winced. “Forgive me, your Highness. I understand you are not to be disturbed out on a hunt. But we just received word that the Count is returning.”

The shot of adrenaline that coursed through him at these words left him dizzier than before. “What? Today?”

“Yes, sire. Perhaps he is already arrived. It did take quite a while to locate your Highness.” The squire ducked his head further, as if he fully expected to hear the slide of the sword unsheathing.

The fury, the impulse toward violence melted away. “Yes. Fine. Good. I shall require to meet with him. Have him sent to my quarters at his earliest convenience.”

“Yes, your Highness,” the squire replied. But Humperdinck had already turned and started away, back toward the valley where he’d tied the horse, at a pace only just shy of a jog.

Back inside the castle, he paced the rooms of his quarters from end to end, over and over. Rooms blended into each other in the endless circuit; the candlelight faded into a blurry light like moonlight through a fog. He felt caged, a fox about to be released before a hunting party. The impatience grew into a frustration that gradually metastasized into a rage tingling through all his arteries. Surely the Count had long ago arrived. Surely he was delaying on purpose, ignoring his summons as long as he could simply to anger the Prince. Humperdinck lunged toward the desk with a growl, struck out at the pile of books stacked there. The books tumbled to the floor and lay there, pages splayed, like dying birds.

Behind him, there came a low snicker.

Humperdinck’s instant of startled surprise surged into the anger that already streamed through him. He took a moment to inhale, exhale, gain control of himself and his dignity before he turned around.

The Count stood in the doorway, his expression impassive except for one cocked eyebrow. He hadn’t yet bothered to change out of his travel clothes, dusty and rumpled from the journey, but he stood poised with an arrogant, elegant bearing as if they were in session with the High Court. He seemed taller than he’d been when he left, broader, older than he ought to be even after the four long years of his absence.

Humperdinck felt the petulant expression pinch across his own face. It wasn’t fair. He had been scarcely more than a child when the Count had departed – scrawny, awkward, vacillating constantly between jealousy and badly-concealed hero worship. But now, how the Prince had grown, alone in Florin while the Count gallivanted across Western Europe in pursuit of his architecture studies. How the Prince had changed. How eagerly he’d awaited the Count’s return to show off the man he’d become. But standing before this dark stranger in his doorway, he felt again as young and small as ever before.

As if the feelings glowed across Humperdinck’s face clear as tracks along a muddy riverbank, Count Rugen’s mouth curled into a smug smile. He tipped his head in a slight, sarcastic bow. “Sire.”

Humperdinck sauntered across the room toward him. “At last, he returns, the long-lost prodigal bastard. You certainly took your time, didn’t you?” He stopped mere inches before the Count, close enough to smell the sweat from the journey that clung to his clothes, close enough to watch his pupils dilate slowly like leaking inkblots.

The Count tilted his head. “Took my time in pursuing my studies, you mean?” He drew himself up straighter, and Humperdinck felt a thrill as he realized he at last was taller than the Count. “Took my time in arriving home to this backwater sinkhole of a country, is that perhaps what you’re referring to? Or perhaps—” His voice dropped, his eyes narrowed, his slight smile spread into an insouciant smirk, “perhaps you’re displeased at how I took my time in returning at your command up here, to these chambers, to _you_.”

All the angry replies rose to the top of Humperdinck’s throat, then died behind his lips as he grabbed Rugen by the collar and yanked him close, pressed their mouths together in a bruising kiss. Rugen tasted almost exactly the same as Humperdinck remembered, but also foreign and unfamiliar. The strangeness surprised him, enraged him, surged the blood faster into his swelling cock. The Prince moaned, the Count laughed low in his throat.

Humperdinck pulled his mouth away and drew in a gasp of air. “How dare you,” he growled into the hot skin of the Count’s neck. “Laughing at your Prince.” He bit down hard.

Rugen’s laugh faded into a voiceless hiss.

Humperdinck bit down again, sucked in the salty taste of his sweaty skin. “I should have you imprisoned. Treasonous slut.”

The Count’s hand slid up Humperdinck’s thigh, across his hips, over the aching bulge of his erection. Humperdinck gasped and pushed himself into the Count as he felt the six fingers curl over the shape of his cock. His hips rutted into the Count’s hand, moving out of habit, pressing into that familiar touch that had glided across his body so many times before. A high-pitched whimper escaped from the Prince’s throat. Once again, the Count laughed.

Humperdinck snatched up fistfuls of Rugen’s tunic and pushed him in the direction of the bed across the room. “Shut _up_ , you cocky son of a bitch,” he whispered in the breaths between kisses, between bites, between sucking the purpling bloom of bruises all along the Count’s neck.

They made their stumbling way across the wide room. Humperdinck shoved him faster, eager to get to the bed, then pulled him back in toward himself to feel more of the friction of the Count’s body against his. Rugen slipped his hand past the waistband of the Prince’s breeches. Humperdinck moaned at the touch, at the pulse of his dick as it dripped an ooze of precome onto the Count’s fingers. His knees threatened to buckle; he clutched at the Count’s shoulders to keep himself upright.

Rugen shifted to support the Prince’s weight without faltering in his strokes. He leaned in close. “How comforting to know that nothing has changed,” he murmured, his breath a gentle gust of warmth in Humperdinck’s ear. “You’re still just _aching_ for it, same as always, _sire_.”

With a little snarl, Humperdinck pulled himself onto his feet and shoved the Count backward onto the bed. For a moment he stood still and appreciated the sight: Rugen on his back, his clothes disheveled, his hair a dark rumple against the silk sheets. The trail of bite marks winding from his jaw to his collarbone like game tracks through the woods. His smirk missing some of its edge on lips so swollen and wet from Humperdinck’s assault of kisses. Humperdinck clambered onto the bed to straddle the Count and pin him beneath his hips. His cock, wet and leaking within his breeches, dragged over the stiff bulge beneath Rugen’s own clothes. Humperdinck ground hard against him and reveled at the way the Count’s features softened in pleasure, the way the light in his eyes dimmed from acerbic into dreamy. Humperdinck opened his mouth to gloat over his victory, but his voice melted into a strangled groan as the orgasm engulfed him without warning. His cock erupted within his breeches, sending convulsing spurts in an unexpected flood of pleasure. Spots swam behind his closed eyes, and he collapsed onto the Count’s chest.

Between his heaving breaths, Humperdinck could barely register the feeling of Rugen’s hands grasping him, guiding him over onto the bed. When he opened his eyes again, the Count was leaning over him. His dark eyes studied him with the same eerie intensity he always gave the unfortunate specimens in his experiments. Rugen raised an eyebrow, then turned his attention downward as he drew himself back, settled between the Prince’s legs. “Aching for it,” he repeated.

“Fuck you, Tyrone,” Humperdinck panted.

The Count made a vague little hum, fully focused on peeling away the Prince’s soaked breeches. Humperdinck lay still and offered no inclination to help as the Count worked the wet fabric off his hips. His erection, unflagging even after spending itself so recently, with such violence, bobbed stickily into view. The Count gave a soft snort. “Ah, youth,” he murmured as he kept working the breeches down the Prince’s legs. “To be eighteen again.”

“Oh, _please_.” Humperdinck gave in a little, arched up and lifted his legs one by one as the Count stripped his soiled clothing away. “As if you’re suddenly some wizened old— _ah_!” The rest of his sentence evaporated completely at the feel of Rugen’s tongue sliding over his semen-coated thighs, cleaning all traces of his climax away. The sensation overloaded his already-buzzing nerves, and he writhed beneath the Count’s ministrations.

Rugen drew back, pinned the Prince down with two strong hands on his squirming hips. “Look at you. You’re not going to come for me again _already_ , are you?”

“No,” Humperdinck snapped through gritted teeth. Another trickle of precome seeped from his cockhead.

The Count leaned in again and swiped his tongue along the leaking slit, tightened his grip as Humperdinck bucked his hips at the contact. “Good lord. It’s like you haven’t been touched in years. Has nobody obliged to amuse his Majesty in my absence?” Between his words, Rugen trailed his mouth down the side of Humperdinck’s shaft, lingered in the crease of his thigh, before stopping at the cleft of his ass. “How tragic.”

The tickle of breath on his skin drew a long, low whine from Humperdinck. He felt his legs spread, his hips arch, his body draw itself in toward the Count’s touch. “Don’t be stupid. My time has been so occupied, I scarcely noticed you were gone.”

Rugen gripped the Prince’s thighs and spread them further. “So occupied, really? Wandering around the forest, tossing off and chasing squirrels?” He bent closer and exhaled a warm gust against Humperdinck’s exposed hole. “My heart breaks with pity for you, sire.”

“I’ll have you know that—that I—” It was a losing battle to try to keep his voice steady, but he pressed on. “I was amused by _many_ in your absence. There was hardly a night when I—oh God—” Humperdinck faltered and lost the thread of his thought as the Count nuzzled even closer between his thighs, laved his tongue slowly across Humperdinck’s asshole. Summoning all his willpower, the Prince held himself still and tried to keep talking. “There was hardly a night I retired to bed alone without turning away someone. Several someones, often…Jesus Christ.” What little resolve he possessed sputtered and began to disappear.

“Mmm. Really.” As he spoke, the Count’s hot breath on the wet skin sent quakes all up the length of Humperdinck’s spine. “There were that many men vying for your affections?”

“No, of course not. How indiscreet do you take me for?” Humperdinck arched his hips toward the Count again, toward the wet heat of his mouth. “There were women, I had so many women while you were gone.”

The Count’s face flickered from confusion to disgust, then back to his neutral, haughty expression. “Really. How horrible.” He ran his hands up Humperdinck’s hips, across his navel, and slowly back down again to his parted thighs, pointedly ignoring Humperdinck’s weeping cock. “Why would you do a thing like that?”

“I’m to marry someday, I’m to produce an heir. Unlike you, I have actual responsibilities—” His voice caught at the feeling of Rugen’s tongue swiping over his testicles. “I can’t just—dick around Europe like—ah—like you.”

Rugen moved back down to the Prince’s hole. With long, languid strokes he tongued him there until Humperdinck felt the room start to spin. Then he pulled away. “And how was it?”

“How—? What—?”

The sigh the Count heaved sent another puff of hot breath across Humperdinck’s electrified nerves. The Prince writhed, and the Count’s hands again grasped his hips, held him steady. “The women. All the many women you’ve been fucking while I’ve been gone. How was it?” He turned his mouth back to its task before Humperdinck could answer, pressing his tongue past the tight opening and thrust inside him. Humperdinck rocked down against him to the rhythm of the undignified whimpers that fell from his mouth. When Rugen pulled away again, Humperdinck’s whimpers escalated into a whine. “How was it?” Rugen repeated. He spit onto his hand and rubbed one finger against the Prince’s twitching hole.

“It was horrid,” Humperdinck gasped. His voice seemed pitched an octave too high. “It was just—oh God—” He trailed off as the Count slipped a finger inside him. “It was just ghastly—” Another finger slid in, pushed against the resistant walls of his channel. The unfamiliar, desperate noise that Humperdinck heard escape from his own mouth sounded close to tears. “All I wanted was you.” Humperdinck forced his eyes open. The Count met his gaze with an expression full of dark, triumphant fire. Then he thrust his fingers deeper, curled them up inside him, grazed with a slow and certain touch against the bud of his prostate. The Prince gasped. The Count smiled.

Rugen’s other hand curled around Humperdinck’s cock, and he began stroking to the same leisurely, measured tempo of the fingers that fucked slowly into his ass. They curled over his prostate again and again, each caress deeper and more insistent, pulling him again toward climax as irresistibly as if the Count had grasped him by the hand and dragged him there. Humperdinck’s whining moans became louder and higher until his throat tensed and strangled the sounds away. His hands scrabbled at the bed, clutching fistfuls of the sheets into crumpled knots. He crested the edge for a moment, then plunged into orgasm. The spasms began pulsing around Rugen’s fingers buried deep in his rectum. Semen shot halfway up his chest and flowed in thick rivulets over the Count’s stroking hand.

Even when the haze of climax faded, Humperdinck lay still with his eyes shut tight. He already knew without looking the expression the Count would be wearing. Sure enough, when he peeked through his eyelashes, the superior, satisfied set of the Count’s mouth was just as aggravating as Humperdinck had expected. Rugen’s smile broadened as he saw Humperdinck watching. He raised an eyebrow at the Prince.

“You don’t have to say it,” Humperdinck grumbled.

Rugen smirked. “ _Aching_ for it.”

Humperdinck would have liked to give the Count a rude gesture, if only he had the energy to lift one of his arms.

“What a mess you’ve made,” Rugen said, brushing against the blotch of slimy ejaculate that smeared across the front of his tunic. He stretched out on the bed next to Humperdinck, giving him a shove. “Move over.”

“Fucking prick.” Humperdinck relinquished his space on the pillow and hoisted himself a few inches over with a strained grunt. He still hadn’t afforded much space; Humperdinck kept his face stoic even as his lungs constricted at the feeling of Rugen's warmth pressed up against his side. “The presumption. Gone for _years_ , then you have the gall to insinuate yourself into _my_ bed the moment you return. Telling _me_ to move over.”

“A thousand apologies, Highness.” Rugen rolled over to face Humperdinck. “You really must see the designs I’ve drawn for you.”

Humperdinck snorted. “You have some grand plans in the works?”

“It will be the most brilliant torture chamber ever conceived. It will be everything you wanted.”

The ardent light in the Count’s eyes sent a shiver into Humperdinck’s chest, which he concealed with another derisive snort. “Did the University of Bologna offer a course on torture chambers? Or is this something you picked up in apprenticeship – did you manage to contract yourself to some kind of expert dungeon craftsman?”

“I’ve already sited the perfect building location,” Rugen continued, undaunted by the sarcasm. “I’m going to begin construction immediately.”

“Well. It’s a relief to know your excursion was productive. That you spent effort actually studying architecture, instead of using all your time for spearing peasants.”

The Count snapped instantly out of his reverie, narrowed his eyes at the Prince. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, stop. Word got back to me long ago about what you got up to in Arabella.”

All the bright excitement drained from Rugen’s face. “I don’t know how that’s possible.”

“You thought you had some semblance of anonymity just because you were far from Florin? Word travels fast, even all the way from Spain. How many noblemen with deformed hands do you think are running around Europe these days?” Humperdinck waited, but Rugen just stared stonily ahead. “It’s bad publicity, murder. Especially children.”

Rugen wrinkled his nose. “I left the little brat alive. He was barely scratched.”

“Really? That’s not what I heard. But rumors do grow, I suppose.” Humperdinck waited, but the Count made no reply to refute the claims or defend himself. “I’m thankful that was the only rumor I heard of your asinine misconduct. Imagine the state of our international relations if you went around stabbing every man and child who sparked your ridiculous father issues.”

Rugen blinked, then turned away to lie back and stare silently at the ceiling.

The Prince kept talking. “Don’t get me wrong, you know how I absolutely _relish_ the notion of instigating some military violence if it’s reasonably within our means. But we can’t provoke the Spanish army, they’d wipe us off the map.” He glanced again at the Count, whose stony expression didn’t change. “Oh, for God’s sake, Tyrone.” Humperdinck heaved himself up, every muscle protesting from exhaustion, until he managed to sit somewhat upright. “You need to relax. It will help you act like less of an asshole.” He reached out and slipped his hand under Rugen’s tunic, ran his hand over the muscles hardened and defined from the long hours of manual labor in his apprenticeship. The Prince imagined him working in the heat, brick dust misted over the sweat of his skin. Humperdinck’s hand traveled over the once-familiar topography of his skin, now rendered strange from the absence and all the changes that had transformed him. His fingers stuttered and slowed over sudden unfamiliar ridges along his chest. He leaned in and pulled Rugen’s tunic away.

The Count’s torso was striped with scars. They traveled in all directions, cut off in varying lengths, sprawled in random formation across the length of his torso. The older ones faded their pearly edges into his tanned skin, while the ones more recently healed stood out, glaring and rosy.

Humperdinck pulled his hand away. “What the hell is this?”

The Count turned his face to Humperdinck. His impassive expression was tinged with the vaguest hint of coy defiance. He said nothing.

Humperdinck’s vision blurred with the rush of anger, the hot flood of jealousy. He swallowed the sensations down and kept his voice steady. “Who’s cut you, Tyrone?” When the Count didn’t answer still, Humperdinck straightened up in the sudden flood of adrenaline, swung his leg over the Count like mounting his horse. He leaned in close. “Who has been _marking_ you?”

The Count stared up at him. His mouth parted to let in his quickening breaths. A flush bloomed across his cheeks.

“Some bratty little classmate at Bologna? Or some filthy village whore? Who was it?” Humperdinck tensed his arms in an effort to control the urge to strike the Count across the face. Rugen’s eyes danced as he watched the Prince grapple with his shaky grasp on control. “No, I know. It was your master craftsman, wasn’t it.”

Rugen bit his lip in a poor attempt at concealing his smile.

Humperdinck leaned back to examine the artless lines banding their way over the Count’s body. “You let some perverted old peasant leave his nasty mark all over you.”

“Yes,” whispered the Count.

Humperdinck grinded down against the Count’s hips. Rugen’s erection speared against the inside of his thighs. Watching his eyes flutter closed in pleasure, the Prince envisioned how the master architect – that vile and ugly and utterly ignorant ingrate – must have pinned Rugen down just like this, must have stared down at him and seen nothing but a beautiful piece of fuckmeat, a lovely canvas of skin to ruin with these crude and inelegant slices. He could hear his own rage ringing in his ears with the rushing blood through his veins. “How dare you.”

Rugen rolled his hips against Humperdinck’s, but Humperdinck dismounted with a sneer and stood none too steadily next to the bed. “This isn’t yours to offer up. I am your sovereign. _I_ am your master.” He opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out the Florinese dagger, ran his finger over the shining flat of the blade. He watched the Count watching the knife, watched him tense his body in agonizing anticipation even as he tried to stay stoic. Humperdinck took his time walking around the bed to the other side. He crawled back up, mounted Rugen’s hips again. “You’ve taken property of the Crown, given it up to foreigners to use and mangle.” He leaned in close until his lips were touching Rugen’s ear. “I should have you imprisoned,” he whispered as he rocked down on his hips. “Treasonous _slut_.”

With slow, careful movements, Humperdinck straightened up and lay the point of the blade against the middle of the Count’s sternum. He imagined he could feel the Count’s racing pulse vibrating through the metal. With a long, steady stroke he grazed the blade slowly down the center of the Count’s chest. Even held so lightly against his body, the gleaming point split the top layer of skin as it went, leaving a tiny white line in its wake like animal prints trailing through snow. Rugen bit his lip; his eyes squeezed shut, and his face pinched as if he was holding back tears.

“I think,” Humperdinck murmured, “my error was that I have been too gentle with you.” He scraped the dagger off to one side, circled it around the Count’s hardening nipple. “All those times I held you here under my blade, and not a single cut left a permanent mark.” He circled the dagger to the opposite side, reveling in the swirls that scratched behind his path. “I shall remedy that oversight immediately.”

The Count drew in a sharp breath; Humperdinck knew he expected that statement to be punctuated with the sudden jab of pain. So he traced another gentle spiral down Rugen’s ribs, across his navel, up the other side. The point traveled over each scar in their jagged, scattered constellations as Humperdinck silently watched the Count’s face.

Finally he stilled his hand. The knife rested just below Rugen’s clavicle, atop the first scar. He stared down at the spot and felt the snaking nausea of jealousy rise again within him. How many times had he run his lips over that exact spot, that pocket of faint shadow in the valley between the ridge of his collarbone and the slight swell of his pectoral? “This is _mine_ ,” he hissed. He pressed the knifepoint in.

The noise the Count made was more breath than voice. Humperdinck sliced over the existing scar, entranced as the blood swelled to the surface behind his knife. How tempting it would be to carve his way over all the marks all at once, to obliterate them under his dagger’s carnage. But he stopped after the first cut and pulled the blade away. He dragged one finger through the gathering droplets of red that leaked away from the flayed skin. “This is _mine._ ”

The Count’s opened his eyes and stared at the Prince like a dreamer newly-wakened. Humperdinck held his blood-tinged finger up to the Count’s lips. “You always bleed so pretty for me.” He pressed his finger into Rugen’s mouth, felt his tongue slide over it as he sucked. He twisted his hand away and watched the neediness flicker across the Count’s face. “For _me_.”

“Yes,” whispered the Count.

The knife settled back down on the Count’s skin, tracing a holding pattern around his chest. The longer he looked, the more Humperdinck’s jealousy swelled in his throat like an allergic reaction. He scanned Rugen’s body like examining a map of a beloved country wrecked by disaster.

Here, the scars slashing across his lower ribs, that hilly landscape he would always linger to taste on the way down as he would sink to his knees.

Here, a messy mass of them clustering like swarming insects around his navel, that soft and vulnerable place he’d drifted to sleep upon so many times.

Here, the rows of cuts marring his hipbones, that spot where his hands fit so perfectly as he would clutch him tight and drive deep into him from behind.

The pull of memories kept Humperdinck staring, tracing, uncertain of where to stop the knife next. The feeling sparked his earlier anger that had submerged below the nostalgia – he was _Humperdinck_ , heir to the Crown of Florin, a hunter feared by men and beasts alike. He had never felt _uncertain_ before in his life. He flicked the knife into the skin of Rugen’s side. The Count gave a strangled gasp, and his cock pulsed beneath where Humperdinck sat. The Prince smiled. Again the knife swiped, again and again.

Humperdinck began to lose himself in the welling strips of red that erupted behind the path of his knife. With each scrape of the blade, Rugen’s unfamiliar skin became more and more his own artwork, his own possession. When the swell of power had smothered the jealous rage, he tossed the knife onto the floor. He gazed down at Rugen, listening to his ragged, shallow breathing punctuated with muted whimpers. Humperdinck traced his hand down the Count’s chest, down the spiderwebbing of crimson droplets that covered him like lace. He lingered over the spot low on his hip where he had carved an elegant and prominent letter _H_ , standing out like a fiery brand against the white skin around it. He traced his hand lower and reached the erection straining beneath the mussed fabric of his partly-undone breeches. The familiar feeling of its shape curving beneath the palm of his hand sent a tremor through Humperdinck’s whole body, fluttering through his lungs and pooling hot in his belly. He pulled Rugen’s cock out of his pants and watched him arch and gasp as if he were being tortured. Then he leaned over him, feeling the warm smears of the Count’s blood on his own skin. His strokes grew deeper and faster as he snagged the edge of the Count’s earlobe into his teeth, ran his tongue along the inner swirls. “Give it to me, Tyrone,” he breathed into his ear. “Come for me.”

A sob spilled from the Count’s mouth. Tears streaked down his face. And beneath Humperdinck’s stroking hand, his cock spasmed and erupted, spurting jets of hot seed past Humperdinck’s hand and onto his own chest, mingling in the bloody mess.

In the sudden silence, Humperdinck could hear nothing over the thudding of his own pulse in his head. He eased himself off the bed and walked waveringly over to the table, the basin of water, the folded pile of linen cloths. He carried these with careful steps back to the bed.

Humperdinck dipped the cloth into the water and pressed it against the Count’s skin. Excess water dripped down his sides, thickening with the blood and the semen it gathered as it went, and drizzled onto the bed. The sheets, of course, would be ruined. Humperdinck couldn’t possibly care less. He pressed the cloth against Rugen’s chest and watched the red soak through as he gently wiped him clean. The Count didn’t move, only stared with blank eyes off into nothing. Humperdinck never knew quite where the Count went to in these breathless coming-down moments after their more intense encounters. He had never asked.

The bleeding staunched, Humperdinck put the water and the soiled cloths aside, and he extinguished the lamps. The sudden dark seemed to reach the Count in his reverie; he turned toward Humperdinck climbing into bed beside him, made a noise that wasn’t quite a word.

Humperdinck laughed softly. “Aching for it,” he murmured.

Even in his half-unconscious state, the Count managed to roll his eyes.

Mindful of the maze of injuries, Humperdinck slid his hand over until he found the Count’s, entwined his five fingers in their comfortable cradle within the Count’s six. Exhaustion settled in rolling stormclouds over him. Humperdinck curled his body against Rugen's like a dragon guarding its hoard. He slipped into sleep with his brain singing a simple, triumphant refrain: _Mine._


End file.
